First broadcast January 23, 2004

Celebrating the 245th Birthday of Robert Burns

10 p.m. to Midnight Host: Steve Winters

This annual show marks the anniversary of the birth on Jan. 25, 1759 in Alloway in Ayrshire, Scotland of Robert Burns — “Caledonia’s Bard,” the “ploughman’s poet” and, as Scottish musicologist Francis Collinson describes him, “the greatest compiler, restorer and editor of all” and the man “who changed the whole face of Scottish music.”

This year’s program featured many new recordings of Burns’ composed songs and those he captured, restored and saved — testimony that his legacy continues without wane as its embraced by still yet another generation of musicians.